I am making a wedding cake for a friend's daughter in December. This will be my first wedding cake, so I could use some advice on pricing. It will be a strawberry cake (boxed), buttercream, three tiers (round) to feed 200 people, with edible calililys. I want to make sure I am fair to myself and to her for pricing. Any advice?

Here are two good articles on how to price a cake:

http://jasonkraftblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/the-magic-pricing-formula/

http://www.cakeboss.com/PricingGuideline.aspx

You can also put ?Coupon=CC2015"cake price" in the search box at the top of the page, hit Enter, and the results will be shown (at the left) as threads, posts, etc. Tons of information is already on CC.

Have you done stacked cakes before? Don't forget to price a really good support system in there! I would price per piece on the gumpaste flowers. Then take into account your hours (not just baking, but shopping, cleaning, etc) add in for your overhead (electricity and water...say $5) all of the supplies including boxes, cake circles, foil, wax paper, a support system, then figure out what your time is worth per hour and how long it will take you to do this...Check out Jason Kraft's pricing formula

ALet's get back to three round tiers to feed 200. 6/10/14 serves 130, so what were you planning?

AEverything the other stated is great, Jason's blog is very helpful! I think there are some various pricing matrix's on here as well. They take a while getting used to (at least for me they did).

Personally, I charge the same for my wedding cakes as I do other cakes. I just charge per slice, I have additions that can make the cake more unique (liquor infusion, special fillings, etc) those obviously add on a certain amount to my per/slice price (and I have all my ingredients, overhead, etc. worked in already), then obviously the more detailed/time consuming projects I'll add in as well. I guess my point is that I charge the same for wedding cakes as I do for party cakes. I've seen some site that charge extra for weddings, whatever works for you. For me that's confusing, and basically all my cakes are stacked and custom anyway.

A

Good catch lol I didn't even notice that!

Are they keeping the top tier or serving it? Have you made a stacked/tiered cake before?

ARemember that since this is a friend, only you know what you are comfortable charging them for, you should work out the fair market price using Jason's great advice so that you can let them know what the cake is worth though. Is your friend having you make the cake primarily because they like your work or because they are hoping to save some money? Are they even expecting to have to pay?

And if you're being paid for the cake you should make sure you're even allowed to in your state and county.